Archives for the ‘Tutorials’ Category

As far as the future of NotesIn9 is concerned, I couldn’t be more excited and honoured to be one of the producers of the show moving forward, and I congratulate Oliver Busse for being one of the other producers. Thank you David Leedy for this opportunity. I have no doubt that great things are to come for this show.

A Quick Back Story

In this year alone, I had the opportunity to not only become proficient in technologies such as Firebase, the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React.js and Node.js), ES2015, Node-RED, etc., but I also had the chance to apply most of these technologies in real world projects. Those who follow me on the social channels would’ve noticed that I became somewhat quiet around May this year, just after my Webinar on Optimus XPages: Part 2. It was from May that I had to dive into serious deep learning and deliver results almost weekly using technologies I only had ideas about. I’m now thankfully at a sweet spot where I’ve delivered what was promised for the projects that are done, and where I’m now focusing on how to transfer this knowledge with the confidence of its success in the real world. Queue NotesIn9.

My strategy for NotesIn9

My way of thinking when it comes to developing applications has changed drastically. For example, I am no longer pro full-stack strategies, where you use a single platform like IBM XPages or a framework like Angular to develop end to end solutions. I now prefer a much looser approach, where first and foremost, I completely separate UI from the platform it sits on and secondly, I work via integration middleware and APIs to bring everything together into 1 solution. This is great news because I no longer care if I have to develop an application for Microsoft, XPages, Node.js, etc. I now have the freedom do develop a User Experience that I deem is fit, without worrying about any limitations the platform it runs on may have.

Yes there’s the server-side component to consider, but to me that’s never really been the issue when it comes to developing awesome applications. Server-side architectures are solid for the most part, even if they are sometimes outdated. For me, what makes all the difference in the world is:

Am I limited to what User Experience I can offer my client in terms of presentation and performance

Am I limited to what tools I am forced to use to develop the solution

So here’s the good news. The knowledge I plan on sharing with everyone will speed rocket you into new technologies that are being used everywhere by many thousands of developers. You will be able to use most of this technology not only in your XPages applications, but on other runtimes as well. I’m going to show you the beauty of developing for the cloud, designing micro service strategies, integrating with anything and everything, lightening fast user experiences, etc, etc.

Closing

All of this will proudly happen through NotesIn9. The best part is, I haven’t even touched on what David, Oliver and many other contributors are going to bring to the table.

So get ready to get your learning on. Keep an open mind and whatever you do, don’t shy away from the new tech. It’s really not that difficult to grasp and will empower you 100 fold in return.

Once again, a massive thanks to Mr David Leedy for presenting my video tutorials on NotesIn9, and for also making the NotesIn9 series freely available to the public. I know he spends his personal time getting out these videos and I know I speak for the entire community that it’s forever appreciated!!

The following is the code to create the Datepicker Resources custom control (ccDatePickerResources), which will reference the necessary Bootstrap Datepicker files that need to be added to the XPages design in the Web Content folder:

1. Mac OSX and Xcode

For those out there new to iOS Development, you cannot test and deploy iOS Applications to devices unless you do it via an Apple Operating System. While you can follow this tutorial using Mountain Lion (OSX 10.8), I’ll be using and recommend Mavericks (OSX 10.9).

Then, you will need to download Xcode. Xcode is Apple’s IDE for developing Mac and iOS Applications. The latest release of Xcode is 5, which is required for this Tutorial as we’ll be deploying an iOS7 Mobile App to test Push Notifications.

Both Mavericks and Xcode 5 are free to download and are available via the Mac App Store. Simply launch the App Store App from your Apple Operating System and search for “mavericks” and “xcode“. You will need an Apple ID to connect to the App Store.

2. Apple Device and iOS

Unfortunately, you cannot test Push Notifications on an iOS Simulator, which would’ve been awesome. So, you’ll need an Apple Device like an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. I would recommend anything from an iPad 2 and up, or an iPhone 4 and up. This will allow us to deploy our app as an iOS7 Application.

So, as mentioned above, your Apple device will need to run iOS7. iOS7 is free from the App Store and definitely worth the upgrade if you haven’t done so yet. The reason I stress using iOS7 is because I haven’t had the opportunity to test the Bluemix SDKs on iOS6. I also don’t plan to as iOS8 is already around the corner.

3. Apple Developer Account

This is sadly where some money comes in. You’ll need an Apple iOS Developer License, which goes for $99/year. Setting up the license is fairly straightforward, but could take a few days to be activated depending.

If you don’t have an Apple Developer Account as yet, but want one to follow with this tutorial series, I suggest you get it registered sooner rather than later. If we were only developing to test on an iOS Simulator, this wouldn’t be required, but because we need to test on an actual Apple Device, this is compulsory. You can either use your existing Apple ID or create a new one for the iOS Developer Account. It doesn’t matter really.

4. IBM Bluemix Account

We’re almost done. What we’re going to need next is an IBM Bluemix account. This is free and is quick to set up. If you already have an existing IBM Id, then great for you. You can log into Bluemix with that ID and you’re good to go. Alternatively, click here to sign up.

Conclusion

With everything above set up and configured, we are ready to start developing iOS Applications, deploy them to Apple Devices and integrating them with the Bluemix Cloud.

The most difficult of all of this is setting up the iOS Developer Program. I did mine years ago and back then it required some documentation, phonecalls, etc. I’m not sure if it’s that complicated still.

In the next tutorial, I’ll be moving to video Media. I’ll be showing you step by step how to set up the necessary Apple Certificates which we’ll need for deploying to an Apple device and sending Push Notifications.

If you find yourself getting stuck with any of the above-mentioned, leave a comment and I’ll try to assist you.

This is a short video series that I’m planning for the very near future, on how to get the BluemixQuickstart Push Sample Project running on your Apple devices.

Purpose of this Tutorial

While the Bluemix team do well to make these sample projects as easy to implement as possible and provide the supporting documentation and instructions, this process is quite daunting from my experience. My goal is to take you through the entire process from having very little already set up, to running the Sample Project and sending Push Notifications to your devices from the Bluemix Cloud.

Overview of Tutorial Series

The first phase of this Series will focus on iOS and will be mostly made up of short videos. Once i’ve properly tested the Sample Project for Android I will initiate the next phase.

This Series will be broken down into the following Chapters/Blog Posts: